Buying property in Malaysia as a foreigner
Five sections, from “am I even allowed to buy this” through to what happens when you want out.
Every figure carries where it came from and the date that source was last updated. Where two official sources disagree, both are printed and neither is chosen for you. Where something could not be verified, the page says so.
MM2H
Four tiers, the compulsory property purchase, and three contradictions in the official material.
Rules
Price floors by state, what is off limits at any price, state consent, and title types.
Process & costs
Stamp duty at 8%, the Johor levy, legal scales, HDA protection, and borrowing.
After you buy
Rental tax at 30%, RPGT that never reaches zero, Airbnb, and moving money out.
Checks & pitfalls
Developer checks, the Tribunal's limits, LAD, and the GRR gap nobody mentions.
The ten numbers that will cost you money
If you have two minutes, read this and nothing else. Every line has a page behind it with the source and the exceptions.
| What you will meet | The figure | Detail in |
|---|---|---|
| Stamp duty, foreign buyer, residential | 8% From 1 January 2026, on consideration or market value, whichever is greater |
section 3 |
| Minimum purchase price, Johor | RM 1,000,000 Differs by state; Selangor reaches RM2,000,000 |
section 2 |
| Johor state levy | 3%, minimum RM30,000 Minimum RM50,000 on a serviced apartment below RM1m |
section 3 |
| Deadline to pay the state consent levy | 30 days Miss it and the approval lapses |
section 2 |
| Non-resident rental income tax | 30% No personal reliefs |
section 4 |
| Foreigner RPGT, year six onwards | 10%, and never 0% A citizen pays nothing after five years |
section 4 |
| Buyer must retain on your sale | 7% Remitted to the Revenue, not held by the solicitor |
section 4 |
| MM2H Silver: deposit / property | USD 150,000 / RM 600,000 Both this and the state floor must be met |
section 1 |
| Late delivery damages | 10% per annum of the price, day to day Running from the booking fee date, not the agreement |
section 3 |
| Tribunal claim ceiling | RM 50,000 12-month deadline; abandoned projects excluded |
section 5 |
Read row two against row eight. MM2H Silver requires you to buy at RM600,000 or above. If you buy in Johor, Johor requires RM1,000,000 per unit from a non-citizen.
Both conditions apply and the higher one governs. That is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in this whole section.
Why it is written this way
The problem with foreign-buyer information about Malaysia is not that there is too little of it. It is that so much of it is out of date and undated. A concrete example: MM2H was rewritten in 2021, again in 2023, and again in 2024. The “RM1,000,000 deposit, RM40,000 a month income” figures still circulating are the 2021 rules and have not applied for years — but they rank well.
There is a second reason that gets mentioned even less: the ministry publishes its own headline numbers as images. On the official MM2H guidelines page, the fixed deposit, the participation fee, the property floor and the pass length are four .webp files. Nothing can read them. So every site copies a slightly different set of numbers from every other site. The figures used here come from the four per-category pages, which publish them as text.
What this section will not do
No investment advice. No “best area to buy”, no growth projections.
No smoothing over the official sources. Where a government page contradicts itself, that is printed as found.
No filling in the gaps. Section 2 has eight states where no official minimum purchase price could be located. Those eight say “not verified” rather than borrowing a figure from a property portal.
If you only want the answer for the development in front of you, eligibility development by development is faster, and the buying-costs calculator does the arithmetic.
What this page cannot do
Everything above is the general rule. General rules do not decide your unit. Tenure, state, price and developer have to be read together before there is an answer, and all four have to be checked one at a time.
One more thing worth saying plainly: I am not a lawyer and I am not a tax adviser. This section collects the official material, dates it and cites it so you know which questions to ask. Before you sign anything, have your own solicitor confirm it against your contract.
If you want a specific development checked, WhatsApp me or send an email.
Louis Koh · 11 years in Malaysian property
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